- Not too long ago I gave you five solid reasons
for self-publishing on Amazon KDP,
and then shortly afterwards, I gave you five reasons
you should not be self-publishing on Amazon KDP
and that really struck a chord.
A lot of people were paying attention.
Believe it or not, it's not to bash Amazon KDP.
There's a little bit more that you need to know about it.
I've got five more reasons
you should not be self-publishing on Amazon KDP.
Just understand, this is not a punch down video.
I do like Amazon KDP, but I just want to let you know
that there are clearly options.
Number one, unfair royalty structure for ebooks.
70% is great, all right.
You get $0.70 out of every dollar,
that's fantastic, but,
there's a big but on this one here, all right.
You gotta price your ebook between $2.99 and $9.99.
What if you wanna do it $0.99?
Well, that's gonna be $0.35.
What if you wanna do it $2.98?
That's gonna be 35%.
What if you wanna do it $14.99?
That's gonna be 35%.
So, this really weird and wonky royalty structure
what it does is, Amazon is really trying to price it
for the customer accordingly.
There's many experts and insiders
inside the publishing industry believe
that it's a very predatory practice
to force authors like you and me to price our stuff
between $2.99 and $9.99,
so it competes against trad-pub authors.
So, if you don't like that pricing structure for ebooks,
well, KDP says, it's too bad.
This is our game, you play according to it.
Number two, decrease chances
of traditional publishing deals.
Now, this is more speculative
and this is nothing I know as fact
but I have heard numerous industry insiders
and some experts stating that when you self-publish
and you get your content out there,
that it decreases the likelihood
that a traditional publishing company
is going to want to give you a contract.
I'm not stating this as fact.
This is nothing I know firsthand,
but hear me out here for just a second.
Let's say for instance,
you have your latest where bear shape-shifter romance novel
and you go ahead and you self-publish it
through Amazon KDP and it doesn't do too well.
Well, now you've got work out on the market
and it has no proof of concept
so when that traditional publishing company comes along
to sniff you out,
and they see you've published something before
and it's not doing well,
well, now you're just kind of showed to them that
maybe your stock isn't quite as high
as you would like to think it is.
And sure, maybe you're a great author,
but the market has kinda spoken.
If they're not buying, then chances are likely trad-pub
is not going to invest.
- [Man] Oh, no!
- Again, speculation here.
Number three, limited reach.
This seems really crazy.
Hear me out for just a second.
Amazon has limited reach.
Believe it or not, they don't cover every nook and cranny
throughout the world.
There are certain portions of the world
that Amazon just does not reach.
Same thing could be said about Amazon KDP.
Though, Amazon does control a vast majority
of the global publication profits online today,
they don't control all of it.
In fact, there some very viable alternatives
in places like Apple Books, Barnes and Noble Press, Kobo,
Google Play Books, not to mention aggregate publishers like
IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, Smashwords,
PublishDrive and so on.
Can you publish to Amazon KDP
and these other platforms at the same time?
Well, actually, yes, you can.
Just remember though, that if you select KDP Select
for a given ebook,
you cannot publish those to the other platforms
until you're outside of that deal.
That does not cover the print book or the audio book.
So, if you are exclusive KDP Select,
it doesn't affect the print book or audio book.
Number four, if you're anti-Amazon.
Okay, I saw this not too long ago in one of my groups
on Facebook in which a author was just fed up with Amazon.
She's like, I hate it, I hate everything about it.
You know, it's just, it's everything against what I am for.
And so, it just, sometimes if you're anti-Amazon,
you don't have to actually publish to that.
Now, granted, you're going to be missing out
on a very large audience through Amazon's distribution
but kinda like what I mentioned in the previous point,
there are alternatives you can take advantage of
and you can really just cherry pick from there.
It's just a case of knowing
that you're going to have to market
and promote that much more since you're not reaching
as much of the audience that you would say being on Amazon.
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Number five, account termination without representation.
Amazon has been known
to close accounts and not give a good reason why.
Most instances when an account is closed
they will just say, you violated the rules,
that's that, get.
And you have no recourse in most instances
unless you plan on lawyering up
and you better have a good case
because Amazon's got some deep pockets
that will fight against you and stand their grounds.
So, you're kinda stuck with that.
And there's some people, and some scammy type people
that would encourage that you go and open up another account
underneath another business LLC.
But the problem is,
What happens when they tie two and two together and realize,
you're the person they terminated.
This has happened.
I've seen a group of people that have done this
where they have scammed the system, they got terminated
and then they came back in
and then they got discovered and they got terminated again.
And this happened a few times.
And then I'm like, what's the sense in this?
That's the issue.
We're in their sandbox.
We gotta play by their rules and in some instances,
whether we're meaning to or not,
we're violating their rules,
and they can really terminate our account at any point
that they wish to and here we are, we're stuck.
So, that's the fifth reason.
If you don't like the fact
that you're no longer in the driver's seat, all right,
you're just a passenger in their vehicle.
And when they decide that it's time to go ahead
and push you out, you better tuck and roll
and get ready for the impact.
Hey, look, it's not all doom and gloom here, folks.
I did have five reasons you should
self-publish on Amazon KDP.
I really do like the platform.
Take a look over here inside this video.
And if you've already seen that one YouTube session,
take a look over at this one.
I'll see you in either video.